Maniai Case File 1: The Girl And The Blood Slide

Chapter 26

I entered the girl's room. It was nice and colourful. Posters of boy bands on the wall, dolls neatly groomed all over the place.

I noticed that anything sharp, anything that could pierce skin, was missing. No scissors, no mechanical pencils. The edges of the desk and chair were trimmed round. The parents must have gone through everything in all the time Emma was bleeding herself.

I noted where she would place her hands. Everything was clean, but you can never really get blood off anything. A discolouration here, a stain there. Dried in the chair's cloth seat.

I opened the books. They were from the school's library, months delayed but I had a feeling no-one was trying to return them anyway. She had little sticky bookmarks with poppies on them, for easy reference on the blood pages.

To be honest, for a nine-year-old, this was meticulous work. I've seen graduate papers less organised than this.

In colourful plastic cases were the blood slides. Placed in rows after rows. The blood was in dark spread out drops, in all its deep colours. Some were months old, some were newer. There didn't seem to be a system in place for cataloguing the slides.

Emma couldn't have bought these from anywhere in town. There were rows and rows of blood slides, in various boxes. Some boxes had stickers on them, others were plain cardboard ones. The slides were probably ordered, which meant that her parents would have to place it. That meant they had no idea at first, they enabled Emma's "research" acceptingly.

I took clear photographs. I was thorough, taking my time, straitening the pages digitally with an app, evenly lit. I then asked the mother if we could take them.

She said no. She wanted to burn it all.